Ethnic Pluralism

Starting in the 1970’s and enduring through the 80’s, pluralism, apparently was a protest against assimilation theory, trying to bring up a new deal into American ethnicity, which was, is, and will be always a delicate issue for American sociology. Assimilation, formerly likened to a melting pot, was believed to eventually unite different backgrounds and help emerge a single American culture out of diverse ethnic and/or racial groups, who are defined as groups that have kept, to some extent, their territorial remoteness.

Now, according to what mentioned about assimilation theory, pluralists’ opposition appears as: “ethnic boundaries, as DeVos argues, are basically psychological in nature, not territorial.” He then maintains ethnic identity is the “subjective symbolic or emblematic use of any aspect of culture, in order to differentiate themselves from other groups” (DeVos, 1975:16)

The motto for pluralist therefore is highly probable to be: ethnicity is a formation procedure accomplished through a “historical context” and relevantly it is “changing”. (J.Hraba, 1979:67)

So, one might say that ethnicity, or better put, ethnic identity is a dynamic entity which is capable of changing and adapting itself through and with the requirements of the time. In this sense, the model is that American society, instead of a single and solitary melting pot, is comprised of multiple melting pots, each of which absorbing its own ethnic group and changing them into a new form of identity in the course of social change.

References:

1. DeVos G., (1975), Ethnic Identity: Cultural Continuities and Change, Palo Alto: Mayfield Publishing Co.

2. Hraba J., (1979), American Ethnicity, Itasca: F. E. Peacock Publishers Inc.